I am a retired electrical engineer who has always dabbled around with music. I played baritone and trombone in high school and college bands. I learned to play steel guitar (which I no longer play) and have been playing 5-string banjo for over 35 years. I use Cakewalk and Band-in-a-Box for composing. I also use TablEdit for tabbing songs I compose on the banjo, then export the tab to MIDI. Of late I enjoy letting Band-in-a-Box create songs, then using that as a base, put the song into Cakewalk and tailor it to my liking. I use step entry, using the mouse when using Cakewalk. Sure wished I had learned to play keyboard as it would make the whole process a lot easier. My MIDIs are voiced and balanced for the SBLive sound card with Emu sound font, and all have a GM-Reset (General MIDI) at the beginning of the file.